Project to retrieve Jewish books stolen by Nazis arrives in Israel

An ambitious international project to locate and recover Jewish books looted by the Nazis is set to kick off in Israel.

The project, “Have You Seen This Book?”, focuses on tracing volumes from the library of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin, which was closed by the Nazis in 1942. Many of its 60,000 titles were destroyed or dispersed to libraries and private collections worldwide.

Before World War II, the Hochschule was one of the leading rabbinical schools in Germany. Founded in 1872, it became a thriving center for intellectuals such as Rabbi Leo Baeck, Moritz Abraham Levy, Julius First, and Abraham Geiger, one of the founding fathers of reform Judaism.

The initiative invites individuals to share information through a dedicated website, where discoveries are verified by the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem and displayed on a real-time online map.

Today’s kickoff event at the Ariela House in Tel Aviv includes the Israeli launch of the Library of Lost Books, an exhibition that has appeared in different cities where the Hochschule’s books have already been found.

The exhibition includes a map with information about the Hochschule library, the looted books, and previous attempts to retrieve them. Some 5,000 of the Hochschule’s 60,000 books and journals have been located to date.

“The Hochschule was one of the most important institutes of liberal German Jewry in the interwar period,” says David Rechter, chair of Leo Baeck Institute London. “This exhibition will help us demonstrate the rich diversity of German-Jewish society before the Holocaust.”

The exhibition recently won Germany’s Grimme Online Award, a prize given to outstanding projects that have public and educational significance in the areas of journalism, culture, entertainment, and information studies.

The project is the initiative of the Leo Baeck Jerusalem Institute and its London counterpart. It is conducted jointly with the Leo Baeck Institute Friends Association in Germany, and with the funding of the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) Foundation, supported by the German Ministry of Finance.